Monday, 12 December 2011

As the promo said "like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." Yep, and over the next many days one of the things I'll be doing is spending a lot of time enjoying that sand, on a beach, a tad south of here where it's nothing but sunny and warm save the cervezas which are frosty and cool.

The shorts, sandals, golf-shirts are all packed. The boots, scarves, toques, gloves and heavy winter parkas abandoned in the front hall closet.

This will be my last post for a while. I'm going to close the computer and slowly step away in what I hope is an internet-free vacation. That means no tweets to my twit friends, no Facebook comment thread hijackings and, naturally, no blog posts.

I've loaded up my iPad with music and books and I plan on reading, relaxing, reloading, refuelling, and recharging.

This time tomorrow I'll be on a plane half-way to paradise. As Jimmy Buffet says "changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes".

Since I'll be away looking for that lost shaker of salt (different song, I know) during the holidays Merry Chriskwanzakkah and Happy New Year/ bonne annee guys.

Don't wait up.

This bamboo umbrella has my name on it.

Here's the update:

And then I woke up with a brisk slap to the face. My doctor has told me he'd prefer I not travel because he'd like to monitor my "condition". Blood work I had done last week has given him some concern. So, more chemo drugs, no travel, no golf, no sun sand or cervezas. And my doctor's about to become my new best friend.

As you can imagine I'm not feeling very creative these days. So I'm gonna take a little break from this blogging thing, as originally planned.

Hey, her, hey Moooooog. You tap danced your way nicely into the winner's spot this week. Congratulations. You be hangin' out with dufus. So wanna get together for Mexican? We have a couple of good places in town and I think it'd be cheaper than dance lessons.

Thursday, 8 December 2011

Robert Service wrote "there are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun". Well it looks like we can add Alaska's Clifton Vial to that list.

Seems Clifton crashed his truck and got stuck in a snowdrift near Nome.

But Clifton was prepared. He used a sleeping bag to keep warm and started up the truck every once and a while so he could turn on the heater all in an effort to avoid frostbite with the temperature dropping to around the -28C mark.

Unfortunately he had no food with him but he did have a knife and...wait for it...several frozen cans of Coors light. You know, the beer that's best served chilled? Yeah, so he used his knife to cut the cans and dined on frozen beer. Seems he didn't have to wait for the mountains to turn blue to tell him the beer was cold.

Things all ended happily as Clifton's boss realized he hadn't turned up for work and sent a search party out to find him.

When his rescuers finally found him and asked him if he was okay, Clifton replied "Oh, yeth, I thertainly yam but I hass to pee sumfin' fierce."

Monday, 5 December 2011

You know my homeland is a quiet little nation that basically wouldn't hurt a flea. Living next door to the land of the free and the home of the brave isn't easy for such a traditionally namby-pamby nation. But our government is doing its best to catch up, even though we can't seem to make up our minds who we want to emulate. And our government's efforts have been schizophrenic to say the least.

For example, our Prime Minister likes the idea of hanging Obama...his picture that is...in American embassies around the world. Not to be outdone, Stephen Harper ordered pictures of the Queen to be hung in all Canadian embassies. Score one for the Brits.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister likes the idea of the distinctive paint job of Air Force One. So he's ordered one of our Air Force's dull grey Airbuses at his disposal to be painted with "some bright colours". Score one for the Yanks.

Not too long ago, the Prime Minister recently restored the word "Royal" to the Canadian Air Force's moniker as well as to the Navy's. Points again to the Brits. But nobody gave a thought to the French translation of RCAF the Air Force's nom de guerre and unofficially FARC was adopted. FARC however is apparently widely known as being associated with Columbia's brutal guerilla army. Points to Columbia. (One senior defence official was heard to murmur "Well, FARC me" at the height of the controversy.)

Last summer, our Minister of Defence called up one of the force's Search and Rescue helicopters to pick him up from a fishing holiday in Newfoundland. They pulled him up in a basket and away they went. I don't know who gets the points for that. Maybe the defence minister.

There are many other examples of imperial and presidential-like activity by our government. The next example isn't either of those but it is equally difficult to explain.

A Canadian Senator has launched a move to change Canada's national symbol from the beaver to the polar bear. How can this be? Canadians love their beaver. Beavers are highly respected. It's every Canadian man's dream to conquer and tame a beaver.

But this Senator wants to replace beavers with polar bears. Polar bears!!! Think of what that might do to our nation's psyche. I guess if this movement is successful, points to the beaver-haters.

And, hey, Canadians love their beavers. They're adorable and have been our national image since who knows when. Besides, these polar bears already have a nice-paying gig.

Saturday, 3 December 2011

You guys aren't serious. How could you be after submitting some of those captions? And the rest of you drive-byers, you're far too serious. Look at the hilarity you're missing out on.

In honour of the annually televised Victoria's Secret Revealing Underwear Fest last week - or as I like to call it "Bras and Panties-palooza" - we ran a little picture inspired by VS in which a model displayed an ordinary outfit; one you'd probably wear to work or to do the groceries. Let's see what our contestants came up with...

Now you may recall Shawn won our last two contests and was aiming for a third this week. However in our little game of groans Shawn's crown was captured by a guy who's no stranger to this contest, our all time winner, who just doesn't mince words:

Ha, ha, Moooooog, your name's almost as long as...your caption. Way to go, guy. You be hangin' with the dufus. What do you want to do? We could hit up the Victoria's Secret store and try on lady's lingerie. (Did I just say that out loud?) I mean, I mean purchase some for our significant others. Yeah, that's it.

Thanks to all our contestants for playing along and, hey, don't forget to click on the links and visit these folks' blogs. They're even funnier in their home environment.

Thursday, 1 December 2011

I don't want to talk about it. The stars certainly are not aligned to help the nebulous nonames make the fantasy league playoffs after our loss this past weekend - our third straight loss. But like I said: I don't want to talk about it.

Your humbled servant went up against Bourbon Blasters this week. He came away on the wrong end of the biggest blowout of the week. What happened? This happened...

"They call me the breeze"

Breeze? Hell, Monday night this was the weather formation that settled over the New Orleans Super Dome as Brees racked up forty-frakin'-five fantasy points. What the hell do they put in this guy's gatorade?

45 point gale force winds

Yep, Drew wasn't a breeze. He was a god-damn hurricane blowing out the nonames to the tune of 134-92.

The playoffs are now only a remote possibility for the nonames. #1 Purple Drank and #2Predator Press have already clinched a spot. Bourbon Blasters and Renal Failure are in third and fourth spot respectively as nonames sits at fifth spot with 6-6-0.

4-8-0 Bald Spots is nonames competition Week 13. In Week 14 we're up against 2-9-1 Multiple Scorgasms. Seemingly easy matches for nonames. But as we've seen over the last 3 weeks, just about anything can happen in fantasy football.